Thika West Deputy County Commissioner Tom Anjere has given chiefs
and their assistants 7 days to make a forensic audit of all eligible youth and
residents without National Identity Cards in their jurisdiction.

Speaking at the closure of a 12-day mobile national ID card
registration exercise at the Kristina Wangari Garden in Thika Town, Anjere said
that they had registered about 2000 new applicants.

“I would like to take this juncture to thank all the officers
who went round every part of this district for the last 12 days sensitising the
youth on the significance of acquiring the national ID. About 2000 youth have
registered though it has not met our target,” said Anjere.

He said that one of the reasons for the shortfall was that
some areas had not been well covered due to the scarcity of time and the inability
of some of the people to get that information.

“The government plans to kick off a second phase of the ID
registration soon that will target secondary schools and those areas that were not well covered in this first phase. I therefore give each
chief and their assistants 7 days to make a list of every home that has youth who
have attained 18 years but have no ID cards so as ease the process of registering
them in the second phase,” he said.

He reminded every chief and their assistants that it was their
duty and responsibility to know all the people who resided in their area of jurisdiction.

He told the residents that the exercise was free of charge
and that it was their constitutional right. He appealed to the village elders, ‘Nyumba
Kumi’ representatives and the community policing officials to liaise with their
chiefs so as to ensure that all youth who had attained the age of 18 years in
their areas have been registered.

He said that the exercise will continue uninterrupted though
this time it will be done at the District Registrar of Persons’ office.

He promised all those who had applied that their IDs would
be ready in a fortnight. He therefore appealed to them to collect them from the
office to avoid flocking the place with unclaimed IDs.

“When it is ready, come and collect your ID so as to use it
in acquiring all the services that are entitled to you. It is good to note that
your ID is social-economical and it is political. And very soon when the
government re-starts the NYS programme, your ID card will be very essential in
getting assimilated because no one can be recognised in such government programmes
if they did not have ID cards,” he said.

Thika Registrar of Persons Mr. Jacob Kang’utu said that
there were about 2000 uncollected IDs in his possession. He appealed to the
owners to collect them and make good use of them.

Chiefs and their assistants have also been issuing these
cards from their offices so as to ease the burden of people moving all the way
to the district headquarters.

Anjere also notified the residents that the government was in the
process of conducting 30-day integrated household survey of its people and
therefore called on them to accord the officials assigned to the exercise all
the cooperation they needed. The DCC said that lack of such census data slowed
down the process through which the government planned for the numbers of people
requiring its services. He added that they would target Makongeni area in order to
assist them in adding clusters.

The last census in the country was in 2009 where Kenya became
the first African country to produce a completely processed census within one
year after census.

Kiambu Women Rep.
Anne Nyokabi Gathecha has challenged Kiambu leaders to shun confrontational
politics but instead prove their worth by engaging in politics of development
and delivering on their campaign pledges.

Speaking at Thika
Technical Training Institute during the graduation of 400 youth who had
undergone a scholarship programme under the National
Government Affirmative Fund, Nyokabi criticised a
section of Kiambu leaders and the country’s opposition chiefs for failing to
put the interest of the country first for always jostling for leadership
instead of uniting in the interest of the people who elected them.

I just like to
appeal to the politicians and not just to the county politicians, whoever has
been elected in their seat is elected and nobody can take that away from them.
But the question that will be asked is ‘what have you done?’ So, let us pull and
work together to ensure that the Jubilee Government is able to drive its
development agenda,” she said.

She stressed that
time for campaigns will come and what was important now for the leaders is to
work to see to it that the youth were empowered and to help ‘Wanjiku’ achieve her
goals in life.

“Instead of (CORD)
telling us to go and storm the IEBC, why don’t they tell us to storm the
Ministry of Education to ensure that we have enough student with the technical courses
and certificates or storm areas like energy so that they ensure that every
single home has electricity, running water, roads etc. Those are the kind of
development politics that will help Kenya move from being a developing country
to a developed country. That is what is going to make us proud when we stand up
and say we are Kenyans but not the kind of politics that will take us back to chaos
and anarchy,” sais Nyokabi.

The 400 graduants that
the Kiambu Women Rep. was commissioning had undergone a one-month course in
various technical skills courtesy of a scholarship being funded through the National
Government Affirmative Fund. These courses were geared towards enabling those
young people to be able to be self-employed, be able to employ others and have
certificates that would enable them get employed in any institution as skilled
human resource.

All of these
students graduated at Grade 3 Level and are now eligible to sit for the NITA
exams in November-December this year. The programme is in line with the Jubilee
Manifesto dream of creating 1 million artisan jobs.

“As a developing
country, Kenya requires technical skills more than ever and we would encourage
people in leadership to focus on technical training skills. These are the
courses that will allow the eleven million unemployed youth of this country to
be able to put food on their table and be able to have family,” she concluded.

ICT illiterate residents, especially the youth, will no longer get
a job at the Kiambu Government if what Governor William Kabogo said will come
to pass.

While awarding certificates to 466 beneficiaries of the
Vusha Youth empowerment program, Kabogo ordered the county's public service
board to only absorb employees who were ICT compliant since all its systems had
been digitalised.

He added that all polytechnics in the county will be offering
a three-month computer course whose graduates will be outsourced by the county
for service in various fields.

"The county government will outsource human capital
with ICT skills since we have digitised most of the services. In this fiscal
year, the county plans to increase funds for ICT training so that many people
enroll for the training. Those who will graduate from the schools will be given
priority when the county government is hiring staff," he said.

Kabogo said his government has taken up the Vusha Youth
Empowerment Programme which has seen more than 1,000 youths acquire ICT skills.

The program, which is a partnership between the County
Government and Africa Center for Women Infomation and Technology (ACWICT), is funded
by the Rockefeller foundation and Microsoft East Africa. It seeks to improve
the employability prospects and income generating capacities of young people
aged 20-35 years from poor and disadvantaged households by training them in
ICT.

"The programme seeks to improve the employment
prospects and income generating capacities of young people, aged 20-35, from
poor and disadvantaged households by training them in ICT," he said.

But he said the youths are also being empowered to create
jobs for others.

A total of 378 youths who were trained under the venture. Of
these, 42 have set up enterprises while 11 work for online platforms and earn between
Sh1,000 - Sh10,000) per task.

Kiambu County is a beneficiary of the expanded the National
Optic Fibre Backbone Project (NOFBI II) that covers the metropolis regions of
the county.

Late last year, Kiambu County launched its own digital
platform that included the enablement of cashless payments, an online citizen
services portal and a robust back-end management system to support it.

Kiambu County Government’s ICT Roadmap incorporated two
phases, the first of which involved revenue automation and business
intelligence. The second one was to involve the complete automation of devolved
County functions with the stated objective of 600% growth in revenue collection
within five years.

On April 15th, 2015, the county, in partnership
with Kenya Commercial Bank (KCB) Group, launched the Kiambu County Huduma Card that
was aimed at facilitating the collection of taxes in the county. The Kiambu
County Card is part of the Kiambu County Digitika Programme to aid revenue
collection and management and part of KCB’s wider initiative to enhance service
delivery to citizens in the ongoing devolution process.

Present at the launch was the then Cabinet Secretary
Ministry of Information, Communication and technology Dr. Fred Matiang’i, who
said that the era of doing business in the analogue way was long gone and cases
of escorting cash in armored cars has been overtaken by collecting money on the
digital platform.